Do We Really Need Another Trump-Russia Timeline?

Today marks the launch of our comprehensive page collecting developments and news stories relating to President Trump and his associates’ alleged ties to Russia. But the internet is teeming with timelines and databases—some quite sophisticated—providing infinite variations on this very thing. So what’s the point of rolling out yet another one?

We think this resource page will be helpful to our readers in two respects.

First, it is simple, seeks to be comprehensive, and will be reliably updated as events unfold and new information emerges. Although the information is divided into several loose story arcs for intelligibility—a choice that we recognize has implications for how the dots are connected—we also present everything on a single, text-searchable page to facilitate navigation and in timeline form to avoid incidental editorializing to the extent possible.

Second, we have made efforts to present the information with the right level of detail and discipline. Developments are annotated with key facts and dates. We also use standard naming conventions, provide links to the relevant primary resources, rely on and cite what appear to be the most definitive secondary accounts, and most importantly, strive to carefully characterize the relevant information. Note that we do not vouch for the representations made in any of the primary or secondary sources we cite or summarize; we seek merely to accurately convey allegations as they emerge and to direct readers to information sources.

This page does not profess to contain everything: the subject here is neither Trump nor Russia but quite specifically the alleged Russia-Trump connection. If nonetheless you feel there’s a good deal missing on that score—fear not. We expect to expand our collection of available information to date in the coming days, in addition to adding new developments as they emerge. In the meantime, we very much welcome comments and suggestions; you can direct them to jane.chong@lawfareblog.com.